Reading Notes: Twenty-Two Goblins, Reading A

("the goblin in the tree" by Perham W. Nahl via UN-Textbook)

The story that I chose to focus my reading notes on for this post is “The Three Lovers” by Arthur W. Ryder (1917). The stories for this section of the reading are based around a very wise king that is supposed to deliver a dead body that houses a goblin to a monk. However, on the way back to the monk, the goblin tells a riddling story to the king and if he gets it right, the goblin runs back to the beginning position (a tree) where the king first found him. If the king knows the answer but answers incorrectly so the goblin won’t run back, then the king’s head will explode. Therefore, all of these stories start out in the same way with the king going back to the tree to grab the goblin. Then the goblin tells a story and at the end asks the king a riddle. The king answers correctly every time and the goblin ends up running back to the tree. The stories that the goblin tells usually have a similar plot. It usually begins with an issue, in the case of “The Three Lovers”, there is a beautiful lady who has three different suitors that ends up dying. After the issue occurs, the different people all take a different approach to solve the issue and then after, the goblin asks the king which person had the best approach or who seems the best. The king always answers the riddle correctly while explaining the answer. This story overall is very similar to the other stories in the section in terms of the plot and issues present.